(NBC, Wednesday, 8,00)

Due to the wonder of "On Demand" programming, I'm able to bring you previews of some new shows before they actually premiere, meaning you don't just have to trust me as to how good the pilot was: if you're interested, you can watch when it does air and then tell me how much I over or undersold it or how much I, as a person, am terrible. Either way, really.

I'll admit it: I've never seen the original Bionic Woman. I know nothing about it except for the following two things: it starred Lindsey Wagner and it was about a woman with mechanical parts. The new series is different in the first respect, the same in the second.

In this version of Bionic Woman, after a horrific accident (which, it turns out, was not so much of an accident) Jamie Sommers (played by hot and apparently British actress Michelle Ryan, who looks a bit like the love child of Liv Tyler and Ione Skye) is given mechanical / nano-mechanical / molecular-machine / "anthrocytes" / something-fancy-sounding-but-ultimately-signifying-nothing limbs and fancy computer implants for her right ear and eye.

These implants are sprung on her by her boyfriend (and her now-miscarried child's father) who works as the surgeon for a biotech company with a menacing sounding name (which I can't, now, remember), which works for the government trying to use these implants to create supersoldiers or aid Iraqi war vets or both, depending on who you believe. But, clearly, it's mostly the supersoldier thing, as these guys are bad-asses.

Working on this project, there's Miguel Ferrer (formerly of Crossing Jordan) as the boss who wants to keep Sommers off the books in case they need to ice her; there's the military training/ninja substitute guy who trains but also works security for/against the subjects. And there's the icy female psychologist, to make sure she doesn't flip out like the last subject (also a woman and who may have had something to do with that  terrible "accident"). The bionic-rival is interesting: she's angular and platinum blonde, in a way that suggests the replicants from Blade Runner and she's bent on killing the surgeon boyfriend.

Oh, and the surgeon boyfriend's name is Anthros, hence the name of the parts inside her, ("anthrocytes") because they were, of course, invented by his father. Who was in jail for some reason. Who got sprung, for some reason, by the guy controlling the bionic rival.

There's definitely moments when the whole things feels like an overblown episode of "The Outer Limits," particularly when they cut to military-training guy driving a speed boat for some reason, or the cheesy visual effects when our hero is escaping by running forty odd miles an hour through the forest. And the guy who plays the boyfriend is a massively shitty actor. Just terrible. And his role's terribly written. When he got shot, I was happy. Very happy.

Good stuff? Her having abilities that she's not sure about the extent of / not sure she can control is certainly a bit Bourne-esque, which is interesting. And the fight scene on the rooftop between our bionic woman and her bionic rival was pretty cool. And while the continuing story involving the father and the rival-controlling guy seems pretty dumb so far, her having a bionic rival, a crazy-ass bionic rival, is actually pretty cool. That she takes care of her sister is cool, but that her sister is a convicted computer hacker could turn terrible really quickly.

It's going to take a few weeks (or upwards of half a season) before we find out if this show's going to be either pretty cool or pretty shitty. So far, it's walking the line OK: we'll see how they do when they don't have months and months to prepare the next episode.

Bionic Woman: NBC, Wendesday, 8,00. B-

Bionic Woman premieres Wednesday, September 26th.